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livehorsesartpage · 3 years

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It had been half a year since the last time he saw her. The last time was when he dropped her at the dance school in Paris. The girl was full of joy and she had run upstairs to enter the building, just to stop suddenly and turn around to run towards him and jump to give him a tight hug. The action surprised him beyond belief, and at a point made him feel something he had never felt since long ago: affection. The girl returned running to her new home, and as she entered the building, Mr. Luteau removed tears from his eyes, maybe, afraid that the emotion overwhelmed him and avoided him to let her go.

He knew perfectly well he had to face the mother superior as soon as he landed his foot on the ground of the orphanage. And indeed that's how it happened. When he arrived, there it was the woman, expecting him at the door with a mortuary expression in her face.

"Where have you been André?"

"None of your business." replied driedly the man.

"Don't talk to me in that tone of voice! And where is the girl?"

"Which one?"

"Don't act like a fool, you know exactly of who I'm talking about!"

"You gotta be more specific." Said Mr. Luteau, kneeled aside his old motorcycle and fixing a tire, trying hard to erase a naughty smirk.

The mother superior snorted angrily.

"Of the troublemaker child of course! Of Félicie! She's missing André!"

"What?" faked Luteau to be shocked while raising from the ground and approaching his interlocutor. "How? I made sure that girl didn't make any troubles again! How outrageous!"

But the mother superior looked at him with skepticism.

"She and you got missing at the same time, and you expect me to believe you're not behind this? After all, you showed to have some pity for her."

Luteau was cornered. The mother superior was no fool and she was very suspicious all the time. Barely nothing escaped her perception.

"I took her myself where she belongs." He answered firmly.

"Are you insane? Why would you do that? You better than anyone knows that she's safer here, in the orphanage!"

"Didn't you look at her Lorraine? She wasn't happy here! You can't make her stay forever in this place!"

"She would've understand in the future why I was strict with her now. She would've even thanked me! A dancer is not a proper career for a decent person. They're exposed to so much temptation and sin!"

"Dear Lorraine, that's what you think of the entire world!" almost said Luteau in a plea "That's not entirely true! Dancing is a noble art!"

"Now you've become an expert!" Interrupted mother superior.

"Just because the parisian society let you down doesn't mean it has to be the same for everyone!"

"My youth years were a mistake, and I'm not allowing anyone else to take the same road as I! I found a purpose here on our little village, in the foundation of this orphanage."

"So, that became your dream. That's alright. What about hers?"

"What part didn't you understand big fool? This is real André, don't call it a dream! She'll get across with so much peril and deception. The world is no merciful for orphans like her, society doesn't accept people without positions! Dreams are idealisms and those oftenly get crunched by the cruelty of reality."

"Then you're viewing half of reality. Let her learn! Let her make mistakes and discover that for herself! She will be fine, she already found someone who will take care of her. She told me about her on the road to Paris."

"And since when have you believed in dreams may I ask?"

Mr. Luteau remained silent for a while, realizing that, in fact, he was being a dreamer himself.

"I saw her dance in the rooftop yesterday." He answered with a low voice. "Remember when she used to trip over the tuiles like a clumsy chicken? Yesterday, she was turning and turning like the little doll in her music box, with so much decision, so much energy and passion... She hasn't been the same Lorraine. She has become more responsible, I've noticed it. She makes her bed in the morning, she obeys, she doesn't sneak out and when I discovered her doing that last night, she apologized and she was willing to return to her room. Forgive me if I say this, but, she better understood that by escaping than here with all your demands."

Mother superior grimaced at him.

"I don't think she's not being realistic" Luteau continued. "I think she's not pretending or playing anymore. She's being very serious about it and I think her desires are more sublime than all our little expectations in life. She has gone further than both of us."

"What can be more sublime than praising God in service and meditation?"

"Love for what you do, Lorraine. I think she praises God in her own way, with her joy for dancing."

"Praising God with such a sinful career?"

"What I saw her dancing didn't look like a sin to me! Tell me, do you really find joy in praising God and in taking care of orphan children? Or... you just do it to have your conscience clear? Where is the old Lorraine I knew? Willing to take risks and learn from life, who searched for perfection and to change the world? Who felt pity for desperate children in need?"

"She's gone!" mother superior screamed. "I had to see it for myself to understand I was being way too idealistic."

"Haven't you forgot reality has a hope too?"

The mother superior turned to one side avoiding to make eye contact with him.

"Not in my experience. You're as gullible as always... André. You have a kind heart, be cautious with that."

The discussion died there. After saying that, she entered, leaving him alone.

***

The next months were worse than the others before for him. There was a strange emptiness in the air. Luteau wasn't the same since then, the children could notice that. He didn't screamed at them anymore when they disobeyed or made a prank to him. He just got angry and scolded them without raising his voice, and he appeared to be more patient with their naughty behavior. He called them softly to form the lines and even helped them carefully placing them in their places. One day he even placed his stoic hand over the head of one of the boys when he passed by, stroking the boy's black hairs. He inspired so much pity that the children stopped being mean to him. All of them agreed it had something to do with the strange disappearing of Félicie, and with the discussion Mr. Luteau and the mother superior had the same day, which all of them witnessed peering through the bedroom's window early that morning.

Mr. Luteau always lived a simple and yet exhausting life. Born deformed and squinty didn't gave him so much opportunities in life like other children of his age. He wasn't considered smart as well, and children always mocked him for his clumsiness. The only thing he appeared to be useful for was to be the altar boy dedicated to ring the bell in the Consecration or to light the candles or shake the incense container, but he couldn't aspire for more. The parish priest of the local church knew well the Luteau family and was apparently the only one that treated him with tenderness, calling him by the pet name of "Quasimodo" something that didn't really amused little André, to be called after a humpback locked up in a bell tower.

He didn't have the brilliant mind nor the untamed determination, nor the high expectations of his older sister, who had a great desire to change the world and make a difference. He was just a "big fool" as she used to call him anytime he made a mistake. Although he found some comfort in what the priest always said to him: "God doesn't look for the wise nor the important people. He places His wisdom in the hearts of simple and humble persons, and He has preference fo those that the world rejects or find stupid or naive."

His sister insisted so much in her young days to travel to the french capital, expecting to learn anything enough to make important changes. But when she finally got to convince her parents to let her go, the parisian population showed to be so frivolous and careless that gave her a terrible impression. Things got worse when a friend invited her to the Moulin Rouge, where most of every single deadly sin was stored. Just drinking, bets and provocative, wild behaviors and none a bit of virtue and decency. That was the night, Lorraine Luteau decided it was not use to give the parisian life a chance. She left the place determined to return to her little town. As she told her brother when she returned, "It was a huge mistake to consider traveling and studying there in the first place."

A few days later she met casually a couple of nuns that made her realize she wanted to be part of them, to dedicate her life to meditation and prayer. Years later, because of her determination and intelligence, she became mother superior, and around that time she felt the need to do more than praying, and she thought it was a good idea to stablish an orphanage, because the orphans were many around and that was one way to make the difference she always wanted to make.

She went in search of her useless yet meek little brother's help, since he wasn't a handsome enough man to bring the attraction to young, innocent nuns or novices, and since he was clumsy enough to not fall in love with any of them and indeed, she was right. He gave up long ago the hope to be noticed by some mademoiselle. He protested at a start, he wasn't good with children and he hated them because they were always annoying, naughty, disobedient and a burden, but in the end he accepted by force because after all he loved and cared for his sister. For André himself his sister was being to idealistic and unrealistic with the expectation to change the world from one night to the next morning. Still, he saw his sister's passion, that flame for her mission to get extinguished with time, everytime she witnessed the sins of humanity and the world that most of the time remained the same immersed in unjustice and frivolousness, until routine within the orphanage swallowed both siblings. André as well lost faith in humanity. His only illusion was one time a cocky neighbor brought with him to the orphanage an old motorcycle he assured to be useless, and which André found to be functional so he was able to use it for a quicker travel in his roads from the isolated orphanage to the town instead of the old horse that pulled from a cart.

One day though, in one of his customary visits to the town to get the groceries, when he was returning to the old vehicle, it seemed that someone identified him all the time for riding it and being related with the local orphanage, because at the feet of the motorcycle was placed a cradle from which a crying was heard. He left the paper bags on the floor and with curiosity he peeked to the interior, in which he found a year old baby with hair of an intense red color, who instantly started crying again at the sight of the grotesque face of André. André wasn't smart, or at least he believed that, but at his sight, it was a nice looking baby. Maybe not so pretty as others he met before, but she wasn't ugly either. Her big green eyes were beautiful to look at. He knew exactly what meant that strange delivery, but he wasn't sure if to take her himself, due to the difficulty to carry two heavy paper bags along with the cradle on an old motorcycle. But it was now his duty, so he picked the cradle up and, in not a so nicely way he placed inside the paper bags, in front of the baby's head, making her angry. Arriving to the orphanage he made the delivery of the groceries along with the little girl, and he thought his mission was accomplished... For the moment. The next years meant to be responsible for that little girl without rest, and didn't passed so much time before Mr. Luteau would hate her.

That day though, that day she was in line when he asked where she was with shouts and she instantly answered, that day she swept the floor without dancing or laughing or screaming of pure joy, when "she lost her spirit." She reminded him of Lorraine's illusions being extinguished, and he feared, that the only joyful kid in the orphanage would be lost forever, to get turn into another mother superior. He couldn't bare to witness that again, it was to painful to revive.

And then that next day, the girl twirling fully recovered, like a strong phoenix rising from the ashes, that amazed and pleased his squinty eyes, and made him realize, and to believe again, that the world still keeps some beauty and hope in it. He felt God's existence so real, just by watching one of the many orphans aspiring to greatness without having great expectations for perfection.

That night, he decided in a flash of instant, he would take her, that little girl he carried in the cradle when she was a baby, to her new home. He didn't remembered to have a smile like the one he draw in his face when the little girl was shouting excited at his back, wearing his helmet and laughing at the top of her lungs.

As soon as he left her, he finally discovered he cared for that little noisy burden. He felt her absence, and the days were grayer, while the first snowflakes fell that January. The orphanage felt so empty and sad... No one cared for him in these years more than that little girl, who gave him a hug he had never received since his loving yet strict mother had. And if his sister was right? It was a good decision to take her back to Paris, alone at her own luck? Does she was going to be alright?

Months passed by. It had been half a year since the last time he saw her. And then, an early morning of summer, just when he was returning from picking up eggs from the hen house, he heard the hubbub of the children, screaming excited "She's back, she's back, she's back!" And saw all of them in group around the gates of the orphanage. He didn't understand a bit what was happening, and stood there with a basket in each hand, petrified and shocked, when a little group of kids ran towards him and two girls, taking him each one by one hand, started to pull him to the group.

"She's back, she's back, she's back!" kept saying the children in a chorus.

"She's been asking for you! She wants to see you!" told him the girls that were pulling from his sleeves.

Wait... does that meant..? Was he wrong..? It was perhaps... who he thought it was?

Getting closer he saw the group surrounding a pair, from who Luteau could only see their backs, one of a distinguished man with an enviable body shape that Luteau would've wanted to have, and dressed in a black impecable coat and a nice elegant hat Luteau would've never get the chance to wear, and the other belonging to a woman dressed in a more countryside way, so simple, so in contrast with the gentleman's fanciness. Both were talking to mother superior.

And then, at a few steps, he heard the children saying "He's here, he's here!" Then, the group got divided like the red sea, and with the speed of a lightning, crossed between them a girl. A pair of arms went to surround his neck and strands of red hair stroked his cheek. The energy with which he was received made him drop both baskets, making the eggs crash within and making Lorraine to get upset.

"Thank you uncle Luteau, thank you, thank you, thank you!" said Félicie hugging him tight. "Without you I wouldn't have made my dream come true!"

Luteau couldn't believe what was happening nor what he was hearing. The girl just called him uncle? He felt so moved that he started to weep.

"I missed you so much!" she kept saying.

After a while in which he couldn't formulate a word, he finally said, hugging her back:

"Me too!"

I've been having this little story in my mind for a while. I just wanted to explore and dig deeper into Luteau's character, who was introduced in the movie as a comical character, but later suprised us with his change of heart. We all realized he just cared for order and responsability, but deep inside he has a tender heart. I wondered, what would've happened to him after he brought Félicie to Paris, and why did he took that decision. I hope you enjoy it! 😊

#Ballerina/Leap!#Ballerina 2016 #Leap! 2017 #Fanfiction #Mr. Luteau #Luteau #Félicie Milliner #Félicie Lebras #Felicie Milliner #Felicie Lebras #Mother superior

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livehorses · 6 years

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Ballerina/Leap! movie characters appreciations: Félicie Milliner.

Even if in the movie there are many clichés, and more in the characters, like the clumsy sidekick, the strict proffesor, the bully antagonist and the joyful inocent girl, I must say that they still have a taste of originality and end to being endearing characters. Here I want to share my Ballerina/Leap! movie characters appreciations. To clarify that those are personal opinions and doesn’t pretend to attack no ones opinions.

I will start with the main character, Félicie Milliner or Félicie Lebras.

She’s without doubt my favorite character. Although it’s true that she is the typical optimistic, cheerful, naive, innocent, curious girl who is very affectionate, who loves everyone, who likes to make friends and experience and prove new things; who is daring, who doesn’t lose faith and who believes in her dreams, like Anna from Frozen, Rapunzel from Tangled, Moana or Judy Hopps from Zootopia. But hey! That doesn’t sound so bad after all, don’t you? And yes, it is true that besides everything is the classic wild orphan with red hair and also very tomboy. And even though in part, it is a pretty cliché character and she can be branded as a Mary Sue, for me she has strong points that differentiate her from other similar characters.

There are many things that I like from her personality. By the course of the movie you can see all by her perspective and have the chance to live her own experiences. She’s vivacious, joyful, sweet and of course very passionate about live and its experiences. But also is very daring, brave and smart. I like how she have a good disposition with those who meet along the story even with Camille who from the very beginning only wants to affects her. You can see how she’s conflicted by the fact that she doesn’t know where she belongs.

The truth is that I do not care how cliché she is, it makes me even more pleasant than many other characters similar to her. When, for example, on many occasions, (usually in Disney movies) they want to make fun of the protagonists, it always has to be that of the girl trying to prove something to others that later turns out to be a funny disaster.

On the other hand, Felicie is not an inexperienced clumsy. It’s noticeable that during all the time in the orphanage she was climbing trees and besides everything, sneaking away was her speciallity. If she was about to fall off the roof of the orphanage, she was partly lost balance when Mr. Luteau asked for her and she tried to hide.

Despite being inexperienced about the outside world, she is quite intuitive, brave and has a lot of guts. It’s quite intelligent and smart, every time she’s at a crossroads usually she has the necessary wasp to find an immediate solution. She’s always on the move trying to solve her problems. Although sometimes does not usually think about whether her ideas of survival can get her in trouble and more when these, involve Machiavellian methods.

That certainly gives us to understand that Félicie made a mistake, though clever, in stealing Camille's identity. After all, she has many defects.

Another of her great defects was certainly that of not putting enough dedication and effort to the ballet as Camille did. But let's make something clear: although she’s the protagonist, she’s a child.

She didn’t know the consequences that her actions could bring. She was angry with Camille for being bullied by her and she took the opportunity to steal the admission letter and take Camille’s place, but surely thought that meanwhile things were difficult for an orphan like her to get, Camille, being from a socially favored family wouldn’t cost her work to enter the Opera. Shee didn’t think that could affect Odette's work. And certainly, when Odette began to help her, she came to suppose that her journey as a dancer, although she was giving it’s dedication, was already assured and that nothing would be in between. That's why she saw nothing wrong with neglecting from time to time, time with Rudolf. She didn’t assume that she ran several risks in her goal to achieve her dream. She had not yet witnessed the bleak reality of which the mother superior had warned her, not because dreams weren’t real, but certainly for an orphan the world was cruel and ruthless.

When they discovered her, it was the first time she learned the consequences of her actions. She didn’t mean to offend Camille, as she said, and she really regretted it when she realized the disaster she had caused. At last she realized that her dream was even more serious than she supposed and then began to work harder, with the means at hand.

Another thing to highlight is the conflict that she lives from not knowing who she is. She doesn’t know anything about her parents, who at first in childhood are our role models and models of what we want to become. The only thing she keeps is a music box. The ballet is something that identifies her but she is not aware of how much weight it has on her personality. She locates it as, literally, a dream, something that she pursues while she sleeps, a memory of something that has great importance for her but that is beyond her reach. The ballet for her is an objective that impels her to continue living within her bleak world.

However, she has nothing else to identify her, so the only thing she has left is just the knowledge that she is an orphan without roots, without a past, without an identity. At the orphanage she still had someone to identify with, but she didn’t feel part of them. She and Victor aspired to find themselves as they could. Things got worse when in Paris everything indicated that she was worthless.

I'm surprised that although Felicie is naive, she's not completely silly. I believed by the trailers that Félicie would fall for Rudolf barely knowing him, but it was not like that. Although she was impressed by his dancing, she felt odd when she saw him practically showing off in front of her. Shee only became enraptured with him when he started telling her nice things, more attractive than those words usually the people who really loved her used to tell her. Flattering her and putting her almost on the pedestals made Félicie feel that someone was finally seeing something in her. Victor was still of his class, and Odette in a way too. But Félicie wanted to be someone, to be recognized and thought that those who could affirm it would be those she wanted to be like them, the succesful dancers. Mérante was famous, and he rejected her from the beginning; Camille was great, and it seemed that because of her greatness she had the right to smash and humiliate Félicie. Rudolf, on the other hand, a well-known Russian prince had set his eyes on her, a nobody, and began to describe what she hoped to hear: that she was special.

That's why, when she was a few steps away from getting the part, when Camille rubbed her in the face that she was nobody, she didn’t have enough strength to refuse Rudolf's offer, who immediately told her she was unique. Her desperation to be accepted made her isolate herself from people in the same situation as her, but they really accepted her and loved her for what she proved to be without her realizing it: A happy young girl full of life, genuine, friendly, warm and perhaps blind to the facts of reality, a blindness that in part can be an advantage when you can trust and like many kind of people, and at the same time a dangerous defect if you don’t see the consequences.

What I like about her is her sympathy for everyone. Although it sometimes bothered her, she valued Victor a lot and recognized that he was intelligent; From the beginning she found a friend in Odette, even if she was lame and grumpy. She genuinely accomppanied her and helped her (a little in work) she fill Odette a little with noise but also with someone who was at her side. Then she treated her truly like a mother and felt great appreciation for her; she wanted to share her taste for ballet with Camille, but when Camille rejected her, she was forced to recognize her more as an opponent. But that didn’t stop her from hugging her when Camille offered her the role, and to treated her as closely as if they had been lifelong friends. She hugged Mr. Luteau in gratitude instead of just entering the Opera. No matter who it was, it would probably receive a warm hug from her. We can argue that she only knew how to appreciate someone when it did something for her, but from the beginning Camille didn’t offer her anything.

She just wanted to feel loved. That gave her security and made her feel that she was valuable. But that desesperation only made her going behind someone who gave her false feelings of affection like a dog behind a bone.

Her rejection to her class and the carelessness she had the night before the audition affected her severely. But even so, although she made a huge mistake, she knew how to learn from it, and when she really discovered who she was when she dreamed of her mother and realized that dancing was not only her dream but what defined her, her attitude began to change completely. The ballet becomes a more serious issue for her, and her experiences, teach her to be more cautious and more hardworking.

She returns to Paris with a new perspective and her new determination makes her face reality with courage. She can face Camille face to face, because she knows that what Camille tells her is a lie. That leads her to achieve her dream, to finally know who she is and to believe in it fervently.

Another thing that catches my attention is the scene in which Victor and Rudolph fight. When I saw the film for the first time, I expected that Felicie would watch scared. But it was not like that; she found it absurd that they considered her a reason to fight and although she appreciated both that didn’t make her stop them upset, telling them how ridiculous they looked. She didn’t give any by his side.

Félicie isn’t at all delicate and I find that she is in some way better than Princess Anna, perhaps more like Rapunzel, but less injured. She reminds me of Miguel Rivera from Coco.

Her buffoonery when she starts to do ballet are very identifiable things for the audience. Without knowing anything about ballet, it was to be expected that she would fall every time, but at least she tried. She is not clumsy.

Another thing (certainly obvious) was her passion. But sometimes we don’t realize at all the importance of this fact. While many saw things quite normal, Félicie discovered in them greatness. She runs, she lauhgs, she lives. Even when at the beginning she was a disaster at ballet, she at least enjoyed it because she was dancing, jumping, twirling, having fun. She kindles the life of those who surround her and that’s why she was loved despite all her blindness.

Félicie is a character who, like everyone, makes mistakes and having wasted the opportunity of her life is a warning to many of us who sometimes have no vision to realize the seriousness of certain things. It happened to me, I have the dream of becoming an artist, but to waste time in distractions when I felt cornered affected me several times and three times I had to repeat an exam to finish high school. What is important is not to criticize Félicie, but to take her as an example when she decided to face her faults and move on.

That's why Félicie is a great character, if cliché, retains a spirit of her own that makes her unique and that makes her after all endearing. I don’t care how much many criticize her. If she is selfish I have the feeling that after the foolishness she did with Odette and Victor she realized that others have feelings like her and I’m sure that later she learned to be more tempted to the problems of others. If she has mistakes, she learned from them and Im sure that if we can see it in a future, with her great heart, she will continue to advance and improve as a person.

#Ballerina/Leap!#Character appreciation #Félicie Milliner #Félicie Lebras

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